he remarked to his companion in a loud aside, "Guess he's brought the axe to crack his eggs with!" The German didn't understand English, so I was forced, instead of relating my story, to "smole a smile to myself." Leaving this, we had to climb, hands and feet, up a steep wall of ice, Hans Grass complacently hauling me up, willy nilly, my feet anywhere. Then we bore to the right, and crossing the head of the Labyrinth, we got to the Crest, Aguzza Col, and, bearing still more to our right, we toiled painfully up a long snow slope, which tried our breath horribly; at last, panting and exhausted, we caught sight of the summit, and over a bit of level reached the flat called the corridor, the second resting-place. More food. My German companion appeared tired. After a halt, we went across a covered "bergshründ," and across a steep ice slope on to the lower part of the rock arrête. Here I felt much more at home, and we went up very rapidly, Hans scrambling up with the agility, but not the gracefulness, of a wild cat. At last the terrible arrête, or rather the difficult part of it, arrived, but, alas! it was not terrible. 'Tis true it was very sharp and precipitous on either side for thousands of feet, but still, for a person possessed of good nerves, and not afraid of looking down, it was quite safe. Later on I found the arrête between the two summits of Piz Roseg a very different thing. Far away down, almost (apparently) under our feet, lay the Morteratsch glacier, with clouds coming up from it, which incessantly broke and showed sunny glimpses of the mountains around. Fifteen minutes saw us on the top, and our task done. The view was magnificent; we were surrounded by thousands of peaks. Palu, Bellavista, Zuppo appeared quite near, and almost as high as us. There was not a breath stirring, so we awaited the German, who arrived half-an-hour after, and then stayed another half hour, enjoying the view, and eating and drinking again. We had taken six hours fifteen minutes for the ascent. So far we enjoyed it, but the descent was not so pleasant, as the snow was soft so that we sank up to our knees. At the same time the glare of the sun blistered our faces.

We went down very leisurely, drank a bottle of wine at each resting-place and arrived at the Boval Hut at 2.30 p.m. We duly recorded our ascent in the book, while the guides made some coffee. Then again to the restaurant at the bottom, where we had a final bottle, sparkling Asti this time, and drank each others' health, to the amusement and (we hope) envy of the well-dressed crowd who had come up to see the mouth of the glacier, for they soon were informed we had made the ascent of the Piz Bernina. Gur "einspanner" was awaiting us, so we jogged merrily home to the Steinbock, after a most enjoyable trip. After a frugal supper I soon was off to bed, to sleep the sleep of the just.

OSBERT WARD.

"AH! THE PITY OF IT."

BY TIGHE HOPKINS.

MANY years ago I made a stay, extending over a period of months, at a small obscure watering-place on the south-east coast. I had just finished my course as a student at Guy's Hospital; and under the combined strain of severe and not over-pleasant work in the wards and dissecting-room, and of a sharp and exhausting examination, my health had given way. I was ordered to take rest, and with it any mild form of recreation that pleased me best ; and being at that time much straitened in pocket, and having no inclination to tax the hospitality of friends, I went down alone to the little sea-side town of Southbeach. I took small rooms in an unambitious street, from which, when the tide was unusually high, I obtained an uninterrupted view of about a dozen yards of sea. It was the middle of September, and the season was waning. The place was crowded, and the visitors, of both sexes and all ages, thronged the beach, "from morn till dewy eve." Although without friends, acquaintance, or companions, I was not in the least degree lonely. I entered thoroughly into the life of the place, and took a lively interest in the sports of the children on the sands; in the flirtations, jealousies and little quarrellings and peacemakings of the young people of seventeen, twenty, and twentytwo; in the confabs of the aunts, mammas, and grandmammas; and in the discomforts and trials, more or less stoically borne, of the papas. As the month closed in, the holiday population began rapidly to thin. The morning train to town was crowded each day; and the loiterers on the beach dwindled like the sheep of Wordsworth's northern shepherd. The brass band performed its last tune on the terrace, and dissolved amid a crash of big drum and cymbals; the negro minstrels washed their faces, and resumed conventional habiliments; the itinerant preacher disappeared on the same morning that the donkeys were driven off the cliff; the perambulators, which had obstructed the beach for fourteen weeks, were hoisted on the luggage train; and the bathing machines were drawn far out of the wash of the waves. By-and-by the sands wore the desolate look which the banks of the Red Sea might have worn on the morning after the annihilation of Pharaoh and his host; and on such days as were bright enough and warm enough for an early dip, I had the whole wide sea to myself. Those who like the sea-side only as it appears in mid July or August, when the season's brief fever is at its height, will connect

a sense of the dismal with this description; but let me hasten to say that for my part I found nothing dismal or depressing in the emptiness of the town or the barrenness of the shore. The little place quickly settled down to the life which it led during eight months of the year; and this in its turn had a certain gentle charm for me. I had a feeling of importance as I walked through the High street, the sole remaining visitor; and on the beach, of an evening, I had full liberty to regard myself as a new Alexander Selkirk, and to indulge imaginings, as I looked across the neverending sea, "that I was monarch of all I surveyed." The barber began to take a personal interest in me; the policeman would halt on his uneventful beat to enquire kindly after the effect of the new tonic I was trying; the tobacconist and stationer, an ardent amateur sportsman, took pains to cultivate in me an affection for the turf; and the young lady at the post-office was never in a hurry to retire behind the screen after she had served me with a shillingsworth of postage stamps. I had another set of friends along the beach, where the fishermen told me yarns which, ignoring the "too too solid" evidences of their apocryphal character, I accepted as unimpeachable gospel; the coast-guards unbent so far as to touch their caps; and the pier-master more than once invited me into his snuggery at the end of the pier, where he kept a bottle or two of double extra proof spirits, of the existence of which the coast-guards abovementioned were discreetly ignorant. I had more friends now, in short, than I had when the town was packed, and the beach swarmed with visitors; moreover, being of a solitary habit, I took pleasure in day-long rambles in the country which stretched away almost from the water's edge, and amid fields stili verdant and hedges yet teeming with life and colour, I renewed the botanical pastimes of boyhood.

A striking (indeed the most striking) feature of Southbeach was its pier. It was an old sturdy wooden structure, only a few yards short of a mile in length, which had resisted wind and wave for nearly a hundred years. Rugged of aspect, its height, length and massy build invested it with a character almost of grandeur; and it gave one an idea of strength well-nigh invincible to note the steadfastness of the piles when the waves rushed against them, and the storm-winds smote them with a giant's biows. In all weathers and at all times, I found the pier a delightful promenade. It was restful and quieting beyond expression to sit there on a still afternoon—

"What time the splendor of the setting sun
Lay beautiful.”

upon the waters. At early morning the air was coolest there, and the sea showed a hundred colours under the radiant sky. By night the place had a mystic beauty of its own, when the moon clave a white way across the gleaming waters, and the pale phosphorescence tracked the swift silent motions of the fish. On a breezy

or stormy day the pier-head, a mile away from the shore, was a coign of vantage, around which the winds eddied briskly, or thundered magnificently-the foam-topped waves seething and roaring amongst the timbers underneath.

A day rarely passed on which I did not visit the pier; often I remained there from morning until afternoon, or from afternoon till far into the night, calling to mind, as far as I was able, all that my favorite poets, from Virgil to the Laureate, had penned about the sea, and comparing the descriptions with the living moving waters; turning then to the sky, and longing for the pencil of a Turner, or the quill of a Ruskin, to put upon canvas or into words the colors, the texture, and the movements of the "unenduring clouds."

In a little while it seemed as though the pier belonged to me. I stayed on it for hours, hanging over the wooden rail, until I could almost touch the waters with my hand; or wandering the length of it," lonely as a cloud," and never meeting but one living creature. This was the man who occupied a tiny hut on the pier-head, whose function was to light at dusk the huge lamp which flung a red glare over the waters. He was an ill-favoured man, short and lean, with a hooked nose, and crooked eyes, who reminded me of a waxen murderer I had seen in the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud's. In the not very robust state of health in which I was at that time, the sight of this man always affected me uncomfortably; and when I saw him coming I ran down the steps of the landing-stage, in the centre of the pier, or kept my gaze fastened on the sea.

One afternoon, towards the end of October, when for three weeks I had held almost undisputed possession of the pier, I was surprised, nay startled, to see approaching from the shore the figure of a woman.

The height, shape and general lines of the form told me that she was a woman, and presently the gait, the poise of the head, and carriage of the figure told me that she was a lady. There was excuse for my feeling of surprise; but I do not know that I ought to have been startled. Startled, however, I was-that much I remember distinctly-and in that state of mind I remained while the lady, with slow, even, and graceful steps, drew near to me. As she approached, I could see that she was followed, at a distance of two or three paces, by a female attendant. She came nearer, and I saw her distinctly. She was tall and slight, and of a singularly elegant figure. Drawn half over her face was a thin lace veil, which intensified the pallor of her complexion. She was dressed in black from head to foot, and wore a rich silk mantle, very slightly edged with sable, which, fitting to perfection, lent additional grace to her figure. She was beautiful, with a beauty that I had never seen before; pale, almost to whiteness, with clustering black hair; and eyes, large, deep and lustrous, and of

the blackest black. As she came to where I was sitting, I stood up to let her pass, and she went on without noticing me. The expression on her face struck me as singularly sweet and tender; but the eyes were the striking feature, and the ray of strange halfsad light that passed from them haunted me when she had gone. The maid followed, a woman of a rather heavy countenance, and strong but obstinate shoulders, who looked straight before her, and seemed to have no eyes save for her mistress only. I watched them as they passed, and went slowly down the pier. The mistress never looked behind at, or spoke to, the maid; and the maid always walked at the same distance of two or three paces from the mistress. I waited, hoping that they would return; but they stayed long, and I, who had been fasting since early morning, at length went home. I was on the pier the next morning, and again in the afternoon, and looked curiously for the unknown visitant of the previous day; but she did not appear.

Meantime my thoughts were busy, and I asked myself again and again, Who was she-and what had brought her to Southbeach? Hers was a figure that would have been noticeable anywhere (I should have singled her out, I thought, from the crowd that had frequented the beach a few weeks past), and was therefore, of course, especially noticeable on the narrow pathway of the deserted pier. It did not occur to me that she was invalided like myself; indeed, there was nothing of the invalid in her appearance: but why, then, had she come to Southbeach, a place recommended solely by the salubrious vigour of its atmosphere, which, in all other respects, seemed utterly unworthy of her?

Three days passed, and I saw her again. This time she was before me on the pier, and as I entered it from the shore I saw her coming in the distance. Saw her, I say, and yet it was with the eye of the mind rather than with the eye of the body, for she was half-a-mile distant; but I knew her in an instant. As she came near, I had an intense desire to hear her voice; but knew that I should not dare to speak to her. A happy accident, however, favoured me. The little kitten belonging to the solitary lady at the end of the pier had followed her towards the shore. She had, perhaps, spoken to it, or fondled it, as it gambolled-where I had often seen it on the light-keeper's threshold; at any rate, it had attached itself to her, and she was at a loss what to do with it.

As we met, and were passing one another, she stopped, and

said:

"You are going to the end of the pier? This little kitten has followed me. I cannot let it leave its home. Will you think me rude if I ask you to take it with you?

What could I say? I said, of course, that I would take it, with pleasure; and in my heart of hearts I blessed the kitten for having followed the lady with the lustrous eyes. I took it in my